


hesitate and I'll slip from your fingers

by philthestone



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Male-Female Friendship, aaaaye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-19
Updated: 2014-07-19
Packaged: 2018-02-09 13:54:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1985406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/philthestone/pseuds/philthestone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Nyota Uhura hugs Jim Kirk, he isn't conscious. And technically, it isn't a hug.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hesitate and I'll slip from your fingers

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS A DISCLAIMER  
> five-times fic. Kirk and Uhura friendship is my favorite thing to ever exist.  
> Reviews are hugs that last more than three mississippis

The first time, he was unconscious. Comatose, in fact. And technically, it wasn’t a hug.

She had volunteered to stay behind – make sure the steady beep of the heart monitor didn’t disappear on them a second time as Spock and Dr. Mccoy were called to be interviewed by Starfleet brass, asked the same questions over and over again, their admittedly only partially truthful answers cross examined strenuously by the stone-faced admiralty. There was a ninety percent chance that Leonard would lose his temper, she thought to herself as she made herself as comfortable as she could in the lone chair beside the bed. And an eighty-nine percent chance that Spock would stop him from saying something he would regret. She sighed, pressing the palms of her hands to her eyes.

She couldn’t remember how long it had been. Half of San Fransisco was destroyed; she was being forced to watch two of the bravest men she knew slowly fall to pieces, helpless; the one person she had foolishly thought untouchable was only barely alive; and she hadn’t slept in what felt like a month. 

Truthfully, it had only been ten days. 

She glanced at the clock on the other side of the bare, sterile room and then back to the pale, emaciated figure on the bed in front of her.

She was so, _so_ tired.

The heart monitor beeped, and she made a split second decision. Later – when Leonard gently shook her awake, his eyes bloodshot and exhausted even as he insisted she go _home_ and rest – she would attribute it to the haze of fatigued that clouded her judgment. Technically, she wouldn’t be very useful in a crisis if she was dozing, but her mind wasn’t quite capable of processing that particular piece of information at the time. Besides, Nyota thought as she crawled onto the edge of the bed and laid her head on a listless shoulder – Jim wouldn’t really mind.

“Really, Kirk,” she mumbled, her eyes sliding shut. “The lengths you go to to get me in your bed.”

***

The second time, it was totally Mccoy’s fault. _Totally_.

Because hugging a Starfleet captain in the middle of a public memorial ceremony and breaking down in tears was not something Nyota Uhura would have thought to do on her own, but she definitely wasn’t the only one crying, and they _maybe_ scandalized close to five admirals and one or two intergalactic ambassadors. And she didn’t regret it – no, not for a moment. Watching Leonard Mccoy grip his best friend into a bear hug in public and gruffly mutter “you know we love you, you stupid bastard,” in his ear – soft enough for those closest to them to feign deafness and loud enough for Jim to grip the back of Leonard’s dress uniform so tightly his knuckles whitened – maybe broke her heart a little bit, but she held it together. Sort of. Maybe. If you ignored the fact that she let out a tiny little strangled sob (completely professional, of course) and tackled the two embracing men with a hug moments later, dragging Spock with her. 

Technically, a group hug in the middle of a memorial service wasn’t against regulations. Technically.

***

The third time, she nearly hit him instead. 

He was sitting in bed in his quarters, golden hair still wet from a shower (the lucky bastard actually got real _water_ in his showers, she remembered jealously as she paused at the doorway, digging her hands into her hoodie pocket), staring intently at his PADD. The old Academy t-shirt hung loosely from his broad shoulders, and Nyota cleared her throat.

“Uh, hey – are you busy right now?”  
Jim looked up, his face immediately lighting up in a brilliant smile. “Uhura! Hey, come in! What can I do for you?”

“Are you sure I’m not interrupting something?” she asked, uncharacteristically hesitant. To be fair ... it had been a _weird_ week.

“Well,” said Jim seriously, looking back at his PADD, “Augustus has just declared his undying love for Hazel, and I’m ninety percent sure this story is going to end in tragedy.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” she said, trying not to laugh and thinking of course, of course he wouldn’t actually be reading the mountain of paperwork that Starfleet HQ had piled on him earlier that week. “You don’t _honestly_ read that stuff, do you?”

“Hey!” said Jim indignantly, “The Fault in Our Stars is a critically-acclaimed twenty-first century classic! I’m being _cultured_.”

“You’re so lame,” she told him, finally crossing the threshold and letting the door slide shut behind her.

“I can lend it to you if you want.” His eyes twinkled knowingly. 

“I don’t read sappy love stories,” she insisted, but it was half-hearted and definitely a lie and they both knew it.

“So,” said Jim, “what’s up?”

“I – nothing, really,” she started, coming over to sit on the edge of the bed. “I just wanted to say thank you. You know, for talking to Spock.”

He smiled warmly, his blue eyes shining and sincere and familiar. “It’s no problem. Though I have to say, I did not think relationship counseling was going to be part of this whole captain gig.”

She rolled her eyes. “It wasn’t _relationship counseling –”_

“And this whole have-sex-or-die thing? Like, man, I knew Vulcans had some weird-ass secrets, but – ”

“Kirk,” she interrupted him firmly. “No talking about Vulcan sex rituals.”

He grinned. “So you and Spock figured everything out then, right?”

“Yes,” she said, hoping that she sounded less relieved than she felt. “What did you tell him, anyway?”

“Oh, it was simple,” said Jim easily, shifting over awkwardly across the mattress so that she could come and sit beside him. “Just that I was sure that you’d agree, not because you felt you had to, but because you two are obviously in love with each other – which is a dumb thing to have to tell him, because sometimes it’s so freaking obvious I have to resist throwing up from all the cute.”

She shoved his shoulder. “I came here to thank you, not to endure your annoying comments.”

He ignored her. “I also told him that if he was still worried something would go wrong, I could always sit in a corner with a phaser and close my eyes. Really, the things I’m prepared to do for my friends –”

“Oh, my _God!”_ she choked, and almost hit him, but then she decided to hug him instead.

***

The fourth time, it wasn’t even a conscious decision. 

Generally, when her best friend – and captain, never forget captain – happened to be severely concussed and running a high fever and so delirious he was referring to her as his mother, she tended to grab him by the shoulders and refuse to let go. Earlier, when the musty jail cell door (God, could it get any more cliché?) was rattled open and their captors came to take them away for another round of questioning, Nyota had thought that her lungs might implode she was screaming so much.  
Screaming _no_ and _don’t listen to him and you can hurt me too goddamnit and Jim I hate you so much right now you God damned noble self-sacrificing son of a_ bitch¬ – 

But he was captain – something she forgot far too often in all the wrong situations, because the damned asshole would pull rank on her when and only when she herself was in danger.

“Whatever they do, don’t try to intervene, Uhura, you got it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Kirk; you know they’re going to –”

“That’s an order, Lieutenant. Do I make myself clear?” His blue eyes had been bright and fierce, only hours ago. Now they were dim and uncomprehending, and she felt like she wanted to cry.

“I – yes, sir.” She had attempted to show him how unimpressed she was with her mutinous glare, but in true Jim Kirk fashion, he had ignored it.  
So now, hours later, she sat on the cold stone floor and cradled his head against her shoulder, trying t ignore the blood stain(s) on her (their) uniform(s), wrapping her arms around his bruised and beaten frame in a desperate attempt to stop him from shivering.  
 _Away Missions Gone to Hell,_ she thought hopelessly, should be the title of her autobiography. Edited by good friend and colleague Leonard H. Mccoy, it would say. Forward by S’chn T’gai Spock. Prologue written by James T. Kirk, in a desperate attempt to explain that no, they’re all lying, it isn’t actually always my fault.  
Jim groaned and shifted in her arms, muttering something incoherent. His eyebrows were scrunched low on his forehead and he was grimacing, his eyes only half open. 

“Shhh,” said Nyota helplessly, trying not to cry. Crying would not help. She was a professional Starfleet officer, and crying _would not_ help. “Hey, it’s okay, it’s fine. Spock and Mccoy are gonna come and save our asses, okay? Like they always do, obviously. And you’re not going to be a self-sacrificing dumbass ever again or I’ll kill you in your sleep. That’s going to be a thing. And like, I know where you live, too, so be warned.”

“’m cold,” was the response, and Nyota closed her eyes and took a deep breath. His skin was burning.

“I know, Jim. It’s gonna be fine – totally and completely fine. But you’d better not pass out on me, or Mccoy’ll hypo you to death. Think of that – death by hypo is _not_ nice.”

“Not nice,” he slurred, blinking his eyes sluggishly. “’hura? ‘sat you?”

“I’m here,” she said, her throat exceptionally dry. She thought vaguely that she was never, _ever_ stepping foot off the Enterprise again, and held Jim a little closer. “I got you, Kirk. Hey –” her voice caught as she felt his head lolling slightly on her shoulder, and she blinked desperately and cleared her throat. “Hey, have I ever told you – this story, right? When I was a second year cadet, and I was at this dingy bar in Iowa and some dumb guy came and hit on me?”

“’mmm,” he mumbled.

“Come on, keep listening to me, this is important. So this guy, I thought he was a total jerk, right? And there was this big fight and stuff, and he got his ass handed to him, totally and completely.”

“Sucks ‘fer th’guy,” managed Jim, his eyelids slowly sliding shut again. 

“Yeah,” said Nyota, laughing shakily. “All because he’d come and talked to me –”

“Th’most beaut’ful woman ‘n th’room.” Jim’s slurred voice interrupted her, and she looked down to see the blue eyes open again. “I ‘member.”

“It turned out he wasn’t as much of a jerk as I thought he was,” she said, and she started crying, Starfleet professionalism be damned. 

***

The fifth time, it was quick, fleeting, and perhaps more necessary than either of them admitted.  
It had been seven years – seven years since Nero, since the almost-apocalypse, since their lives had been catapulted on a trajectory none of them were sure was going anywhere normal. It was the final year of their first deep space mission, and Nyota had experienced more life-threatening situations, topsy-turvy away missions, weird-ass medical conditions, strange crew-related personality quirks, and drunken karaoke nights than she ever dreamed she would.  
In retrospect, the little gasp – the sudden tensing of his shoulders and the fleeting crease of his eyebrows – would have sent sirens off in Spock’s mind immediately; but Spock was on Gamma shift that day, and besides, Nyota was the one to relay the transmission in the first place. When, after a good forty minutes of aimlessly orbiting Cetus IV, Kirk got up casually and gave the conn to Sulu, she hesitated for a moment, then put down her earpiece and followed him off the bridge. She found him on the observation deck, staring out at the stars, his arms hanging uselessly at his sides.

She put her hand on his shoulder, and he turned to face her.

They stood in comfortable silence for a moment; two moments. And then:

“I’m being silly, aren’t I? Being this upset? I mean, it’s not like he’s _gone –_ ” he took a deep breath, “our Spock will get there one day, but ...”

“It’s not the same,” she supplied. “I know. I’m sorry, Jim.”

He shrugged. “Don’t be – it’s not your fault. I mean, the guy was old; _really_ old. I should have been expecting this, you know?”

She rolled her eyes. “No one _expects_ death, Kirk.”

He sighed. “I know. Just ... I really liked the old Vulcan. He actually _smiled._ And –” his voice caught, and he looked uncharacteristically unsure of himself. “And he looked at me sometimes – like he respected me for things that I hadn’t even _done._ I never really earned that respect.” The bright blue eyes were focused intently at his hands.

“Hey,” she said sharply. “Look at me,” she insisted when he didn’t turn immediately. He looked up hesitantly.  
“Don’t you dare think for a _moment_ that you didn’t deserve that man’s respect, Jim Kirk.”

He looked surprised for a moment – and then, slowly, he smiled weakly. “Thanks, Uhura.”

She stepped forward and wrapped her arms around him tightly before he could push her away and gave him a quick squeeze; when she stepped back, she could see some of the shine return to his eyes. 

“And Jim? Friends call each other by their first names.” 

He grinned.

***

She could hear the angry voice on the other side of the room through the haze of her drugged brain. It was a familiar voice, she thought. It carried a tangible sort of normality that dissolved the feeling of floating outside of her body. But she couldn’t quite place it – she’d spent her entire life studying voices and languages and inflections and accents; even semi-conscious, more asleep than awake, she focused on the words echoing vaguely from across the room and tried to recognize them.  
It was male, she thought. Definitely male. Deep – deeper than Spock’s, that was for sure. The accent – American, certainly – but not enough of a drawl to be Southern. It had a hint of the sort of nasal quality that would accompany a mid-central prairies tone ... was it? Nebraska?

No – Iowa. 

Nyota cracked her eyes open, and immediately squeezed them shut again when the bright lights of medbay pierced through her vision. As she slowly came to realize her surroundings, she could feel the puffiness of her right eyelid and the ache in her back and lower abdomen. She tried to breathe and felt a sharp twinge in her chest. Jim’s voice was still sounding angrily from somewhere to her left. 

“ – and you couldn’t have told us what to _expect_ when we beamed down, sir? That was no diplomatic mission; that was the biggest shitstorm I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a _lot_ of shitstorms. You can’t tell me the Federation actually thought those people would want to join – ”

“That wasn’t the point, Kirk –”  
This voice was rough and loud – Kormack, she thought. Deputy Head of Starfleet now that Barnett was head, just under President Marlentes. He sounded annoyed.

“The point, _sir,_ was that _my_ crew’s _lives_ were put on the line for what turned out to be a complete farce of a mission, which in my book is unacceptable! Next time brass decides to dump a mission like that on us they better tell us their real intentions –”

“Are you insinuating that Starfleet was _trying_ to get a military reaction out of those quacks? ‘Cause let me tell, you, _Captain,_ you don’t got any right to –”

“I’m not insinuating anything, sir,” Jim’s voice was cold and biting and very, _very_ angry; something she hadn’t heard in a long time. “But next time you think you can use my men as bait, you can kiss my ass.”

“Watch it, Kirk. I can have you written up for insubordination –”

“Have fun,” snapped Jim. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m not letting you cause my crew to suffer losses like that ever again. This conversation is over.”  
She heard the chirp of the PADD system and tried to breathe again.  
She remembered now, the yelling, the blows to her face and the faceless people who threw her to the ground. It all seemed so far away, like some weird dream that she had had the night before. The more she tried to recall the details, the hazier they got.

“Well,” came the drawl of Leonard’s voice. “It’s a good thing I emptied the room before you made that call.”

“Not now, Bones,” said Jim tiredly. 

“Don’t beat yourself up, kid – it wasn’t your fault.”

“I took them down there – I, I should’ve know, at least, to –”

“Jim.” He sounded genuinely concerned. “If you take every loss this ship faces as a personal failing, you’re not gonna make it to thirty five.”

“But this one – I _asked_ her to come –” She could hear Mccoy’s sharp intake of breathe.

“None of us saw that one coming, Jimmy. I don’t think she herself knew.”

It was then that she remembered thinking vaguely that something terrible must have happened.

It was just that she didn’t know to whom.

Hours (or was it days?) later, she lay between the thin white sheets in medbay and stared at the ceiling, a hole in her chest she would never, since then, be able to dispel completely. Jim was sleeping in the bed next to hers, his heart rate being monitored steadily and the reds and blacks and blues around his eyes fading slowly. Leonard’s apologetic eyes were imprinted into her skull, just behind her eyes – the way he had taken her hand before he told her, hesitant because he didn’t know if she didn’t know, because Spock not knowing didn’t make it a sure thing.

“You were only a couple weeks along,” he had insisted, after making sure she was conscious and breathing and stable and maybe a little less likely to break completely when told. “I don’t blame you for not realizing, if you didn’t, I – Nyota, I’m so sorry, I just couldn’t save it, and you’d taken such a bad beating ...”

She wanted to say something, to tell him not to look so broken. It wasn’t his fault.

“I take it you didn’t know either,” he said quietly, and she nodded, numb.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart.”

It had been three days and she still couldn’t cry, only feel empty and sad and _responsible,_ in a way, because if she had known – oh, if she had know, she would have taken precautions, stuck a phaser in her boot, _not gone at all –_  
Spock came by as often as he could. Mccoy was aggressively insisting that Jim was not allowed to do anything other than get up and go to the bathroom, even though Kirk insisted he was perfectly fine ( _“Perfectly fine?!_ Good _God,_ man, do you realized what they did to you face alone? Your vitals are hardly stable! In fact, I shouldn’t even be letting you out in two days, but if I don’t, there’s a high probability I’ll violate my doctor’s code, so I will!” “You’re so thoughtful, Bones.” “Damn _straight_ I’m thoughtful.”). Spock’s duties were now double what they usually were, and though Mccoy offered to relieve him of his duties for medical reasons, Nyota insisted that in the wake of Kirk’s (relative) immobility, the _Enterprise_ needed Spock to keep her from nose-diving. (At least, she thought she may have said that, but she wasn’t quite sure she was capable of forming sentences because honestly, she just felt so _lost._ )  
Truthfully, while there was only so much they could say, and only so much comfort they could derive from each others’ thoughts, Nyota valued his presence more than anything, and felt it acutely every time he was gone. But she couldn’t say it.

She hadn’t yet cried. It had been three days and all she had wanted to do was cry, but she couldn’t. All she could do was stare blankly at the wall in front of her and feel empty.

Losing a baby – even if you didn’t know you had the baby – was hard; Christine told her gently when she came by to change the bandage around Nyota’s fingers. She nodded.

Nodding seemed to be the only thing she was capable of. 

She continued staring at the wall, her position having shifted to the far side of the bed since the previous day due to the convenience of the glass of replicated water by the bedside. There was so much space beside her, she thought vaguely. She wished Spock were there.  
She registered the sudden dip in the bed beside her only subconsciously, and it took her more time than she would have liked to turn around and face the familiar warmth that had just settled beside her shoulder and was dutifully staring at the wall just like her. Her neck was still sore, as was her abdomen, arms, and lower back, and the puffiness in her eye still hadn’t gone away – and yet, compared to Jim, she thought, she must have looked the picture of health. She stared at the mottled purple that ringed his cheekbones and the freshly-crooked bridge of his nose, down to his arm, which was still in a cast. She blinked.

“You don’t look ‘fine’ to me, either, you know.”  
The words came out of her mouth before she realized she was _actually talking,_ and Jim smiled at her – not his usual charming care-free grin, but a small, sincere, encouraging quirk of the lips that she wasn’t sure she fully appreciated at the time. 

“Way to gang up on your fellow invalid,” he teased.  
She wanted to smile, but the muscles in her face still didn’t seem to be working, so she went back to staring at the wall, a small frown creasing her forehead. Presently:

“Did you know one time I caught Bones and Chapel macking against that very wall?”  
Her neck twinged at the speed which she turned to gape at him, but she didn’t notice this time.

“You’re kidding?”

“Nah, it happened. Just thought you should know, since you find it so fascinating lately. Or maybe you _already_ knew, and that’s why you stare at it, I dunno. But hey, fun fact.”

The tenderness in his eyes was something that she hadn’t realized he possessed – or maybe she had, but never really wanted to admit. They had both been injured so badly that they had hardly had a chance to acknowledge others’ vitality before they were sedated and moved into emergency surgery, and between Jim yelling at Starfleet brass, Leonard trying to decide whether he wanted to play mother hen or pissed-off doctor, and gripping tightly to Spock’s hand as if her life depended on it, they hadn’t really been able to talk. Nyota wasn’t even sure she had _wanted_ to talk, but it would have been hard to ignore his confinement to the same med-room for much longer. She turned her gaze to her hands and felt like something was smothering her.

“I should have realized,” she mumbled. She could feel his shoulder tense beside her.

“What, that Bones and Christine have a thing? Don’t worry, they’re pretty good at covering up, and it’s only occasionally. I just know because I’m supremely perceptive and awesome. Also, I walked in on them accidently.”

“No,” she began, “I mean ...” the words were caught in her throat. “I’m sorry,” she finally whispered. “I know it wasn’t anyone’s fault, I just –” 

“Hey.” Softly, gently. She felt a large hand on her shoulder. She turned. “It’s gonna be okay,” he said quietly. “I promise.”  
She felt rather than heard the sob escape from her throat, but it was muffled against Jim’s shoulder, and she felt his arms wrap around her gently in a hug, pulling her onto his lap and letting her bury her face in his shirt. Later she would realize that this was the first time he had initiated their embraces – perhaps it was a lingering habit of the Academy, that even after all those years of friendship he was still hesitant to truly encroach on her personal space without her permission. If Jim minded the tear stains on his t-shirt, he didn’t say anything.

It was nice, Nyota thought, to have a brother.


End file.
